I’ve taken yet another trip into the In Your Face installation. I’m getting pretty excited. The exhibition opens in just three days and the walls of our big gallery are covered in over 10,000 faces. I’ve definitely never before been in the presence of so many personalities – all at one time. On each visit I try to look at a few portraits carefully. I’m impressed by the expressive quality of the eyes (and there are so many different ways of capturing them), but then I think, no, perhaps it’s the mouth that is the most telling feature of the face. And then I think, what about the eyebrows, or perhaps more importantly the brow – which fascinated Rembrandt so much. Rembrandt studied the brow and used it to express the notion of the sitter thinking – a challenge to any portraitist. So now I’m not really sure….What is the most evocative feature of the human face?
